Written for his unborn daughter on a smallholding in Nazi Germany just before the war, Krank Fuss (‘sick foot’), tells the story of one of a brood of chickens recently acquired by a WWI veteran from a neighbouring farm. Ostracised because of her deformed limb, Krank Fuss befriends Gibby, a toad who considers themself a frog, and together they explore the world of the farm around them. Over the course of the tale, she learns the biggest dangers are never as bad as she imagined, and that even though she has no say in the conditions of her life, she must still make decisions and those decisions matter because terrible cruelty and violence are much closer than she had thought possible. Part allegory in the spirit of Animal Farm, part Art Brut parable, Krank Fuss unfolds against the background of an impending social catastrophe, unsettlingly echoing the world today. It is the story of the innocent discovering the cruelty of the natural world, seeking for another way that might allow the delicate Wonder of Life to peak above the nastiness, brutishness and brevity of her apparent Fate.
